Coding agents

An agent that edits a site's metadata, sitemap, robots.txt or hreflang cannot see what it broke: the page renders, nothing fails, and the damage shows weeks later in a search console. goflag can see it before the commit. The agent only has to be told to look.

The block to paste

Put this in the instructions your agent reads — AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or your editor's rules file:

## SEO checks
 
Before committing a change to metadata, the
sitemap, robots.txt or hreflang, audit the dev
server with goflag: the `audit_site` tool of the
goflag MCP server, or
`npx @goflag/cli http://localhost:3000 --json --summary`.
Fix every finding that is new. `explain_rule <id>`,
or the rule's page on goflag.tech, says what the
rule requires and who requires it.

Instructions the agent reads every time do more than a skill it has to decide to load: the check runs because the file says so, not because the agent remembered it exists.

Two ways in

• The MCP server, when the agent's client speaks MCP: typed tools, progress while it crawls, and each rule a call away.
• goflag <url> --json --summary, for anything that runs a shell: one compact payload, findings rolled up by rule.

Both run the same engine and return the same findings.

What an agent gets to read

goflag is written to be read by something that has to act on it.

• Every finding carries its rigor. spec-required and vendor-spec are requirements; guideline and heuristic are advice. An agent can fix the first kind without asking and propose the second.
• Every rule cites its sources. explain_rule, or goflag rules for the whole catalogue as JSON, gives the documents behind a rule rather than an opinion about it.
• Questions stay questions. Five rules ask something a linter cannot decide — does the title describe the page, is it in the declared language. With --advisories (or advisories in audit_site) they come back with the evidence the agent needs to judge, and they never count toward the exit code.
• A baseline separates new from known. On a site with a backlog, "fix every finding" is a week of work; "fix what this change introduced" is the task. Baseline gating and compare_to_baseline both answer it.